Previous - 183. Seeing the end
Last time on Bloggity-blog...
Last time I talked about getting a glimpse or foreshadowing of the end of life or my event season. This morning I realized there is another way this is true just now. Below is a picture of the poor tree that grows in a pot in our alley.Last year it suffered all kinds of injury and indignity as it was pushed about the alley by various workmen before finally coming to rest outside my alley window. And then someone knocked off yet another limb for no reason I'm aware of.
But here it is, fully leafed out on its few remaining limbs, and doing surprisingly well. Except that I happen to know that it is already preparing for winter. It's going through the process of pulling the things it still wants out of its leaves and putting the waste it doesn't want into those leaves. Soon the leaves will all drop -- over a surprisingly short period of days -- and it will be bare for the winter.
This is especially odd here as the tree's peak growing season -- when the days are longest and the sun is highest in the sky -- doesn't mesh with our warm weather, which will start in maybe a month, at which point the tree will probably be bare. Maybe if it was a species of tree that was native to this area it would have a cycle more consistent with our weather? I don't know. If it was in the ground instead of this pot, I'm pretty sure it would keep its leaves longer, so the fact that it is already starting to hibernate wouldn't be obvious. But it does serve to remind me that natural processes are going on all around us that we are unaware of. That appearances can be deceiving.
My Name Is...
I'm finished reading but not finished thinking about this novel. It's the story of a daughter, a wife, a mother, and a writer. Aside from it being fiction, it is remarkably similar to the memoirist parts of Salie Tisdale's collection of essays.It would be nice to have a book that mashed together the stories of families where the husband left the wife, the wife left the husband, and neither left but someone probably should have. The children would all be resentful of different things. Maybe one of them would be aware that the adults were all just doing the best they could. But this probably wouldn't be the kid who was the biggest screw-up his or herself.
And we never do get the hinted nasty bits of the story. I don't exactly mind that, except that it means we can't judge the protagonist's actions. If we knew we would be in a position to say she acted correctly or incorrectly -- from our perspective -- but as it is we have to give her the benefit of the doubt. Not that that's a bad thing, but it does seem a little unfair. Or a little too uncritical.
Cafe calculus
Or, "Life is hard, Yo." I'm at the Peet's on Market because I got off BART at Powell and because it's the weekend (so the Bank Cafe isn't open). Besides having to pay an extra dollar for my iced tea here, I'm also subjected to the hits from the 1960s. At the Bank Cafe, the music is better (usually) but the WiFi (while better than it was) still sucks. The Specialty Cafe (also, sort-of Peet's) has better seating, but costs a little more and has WiFi that is usually in the middle, plus they are also closed on the weekend and even during the week they close early (5 pm, I think). There's a Starbucks that has excellent WiFi and similar prices, but I'm not fond of Starbucks and they also have very limited seating.Yesterday I went to Caffe Grecco in North Beach because I wanted a change of pace and because I wanted to thoroughly browse the new hardware store there -- I suddenly realized that it was about the same distance as the one I usually go to (same company) but there is less of a change in elevation going to this new one. It does seem to be well stocked and not as busy.
An optimistic future
Recently I read a piece that spun several current trends in a very positive direction. The author saw electric, self-driving cars leading to a world with relatively few, long-lasting cars serving the majority of people. This would reduce drastically the need for oil (at least 30%) which would lead to a collapse of that industry and an end to both drilling and pollution (including greenhouse gases). Parked cars would become a thing of the past, freeing space for people and bicycles and for housing where there are parking lots and garages today.
The author thought these changes would have job creation effects that would balance the obvious job loses of people who currently drive or work in the oil and automobile industries. I didn't buy that, so I didn't bother to remember the job creation details. I will give the scheme credit for preserving the value of suburban real estate, since it preserves automobiles in a new form. Since we appear to be too stupid now to build neighborhoods that work, I would rather see a return to public transit and walking, but I do think the autonomous electric car dream is more realistic. Even I would give in and buy a smartphone so I could access these vehicles when the prices were reduced to reflect the lack of a driver.
